To state fully why a new book on Dostoevsky should be published is to offer a critique of limitations of many of those available. In general, the primary drawbacks of the existing literature on Dostoevsky, writs Dr. Wasiolek, are these: the works of Murry, de Vog_, Pisarev, Mikhaylovsky, Volynsky, and Merezhkovsky are historical data and provide their readers with an insight to an earlier view of the great Russian novelist; Berdyaevs interpretation is essentially theological; Mikhaylovskys sociological; Grossmans work inclines toward craft and avoids Dostoevsky as thinker. Who can read Gides work on Dostoevsky today as an aid to understanding Dostoevsky? Where will you send the readers of Dostoevsky-and their number is legion-for help with specific points of interpretation?

xiv, 255 pages ; 21 cm

In the past, critics have considered Dostoevsky an artist, thinker or psychologist, according to their own temperment. Now, with the appearance of Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction, it is at last possible to see him whole - for in this close, critical reading of Dostoevsky's major works the aesthetic, ideological, and psychological factors are as thoroughly interwoven and interdependant as they are in the novels themselves

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-248) and index

The early works -- The Petrashevsky circle and The house of the dead -- Chernyshevsky and The insulted and the injured -- Notes from the underground and Dostoevsky's moral dialectic -- Crime and punishment -- The idiot -- The possessed -- The adolescent and The dream of the ridiculous man -- The Brothers Karamazov

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